The Comfort of Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

millions of opportunities Tia shouldn’t take from Honor, who’d get privileges Tia never knew. Bars, not parklands, had dotted South Boston, a mainly Irish neighborhood where she got to be exotic simply because her father’s Italian side colored her mother’s Irish genes, giving Tia pale skin and near-black hair. Her mother used to make the sign of the cross as they walked by taverns Tia’s father patronized before he disappeared, whispering advice as she crossed herself.
    “Forget these men,” her mother would say, lifting her chin toward a gang of boys hanging on the corner. “Find a Jewish man. They make the best husbands.” Her mother’s low murmur conveyed the shame she felt—shame that her husband, Tia’s father, had left them, and maybe shame that her words betrayed Southie. Her mother had felt disloyal when she strayed from South Boston’s casual anti-Semitism. Her mother grew up in Southie, and she raised her daughter there,but she worked at Brandeis University—“Jew U.,” as many in Southie called the school. Tia’s mother didn’t side with any of what she called “that ridiculousness,” but she loved her loyal neighbors too much to take them to task.
    Perhaps Jewish Nathan made a good Jewish husband for his half-Jewish wife, one of the few details he’d shared about the sainted-wife-who-will-never-be-mentioned. God knows that if one measured goodness by his panicked reaction when Tia hinted at marriage, then Nathan measured up as a prince of husbands.
    Katie leaned down to take Tia’s trash basket.
    Tia put her hand on the rim and held it in place. “What are you doing?”
    “Straightening. Devin won’t be in for three days.”
    Jamaica Plain Senior Advocate Center could afford a janitor only once a week. Tia kept hold of the pail as Katie pulled at it. “I’ll empty my own basket,” Tia said.
    “Fine,” Katie said. “Just don’t forget that today is Dumpster day.”
    Imagining banana peels and apple cores falling on Honor’s face panicked Tia. She reached into the pail and pulled out the photo, drying unseen moisture by pressing it to her shirt.
    “What are you doing?” Katie drew back as though Tia were swinging bits of bacteria her way.
    “It’s bad juju, tossing away a child’s picture. Didn’t you know that?”
     • • • 
    Eight hours later, Tia climbed the bus steps. Darkness draped her mood, though nothing had gone wrong. In fact, it had been a day of reaping benefits from the previous month, when she’d walked door to door asking local business owners to donate small treats and trips for her clients. Lately, she’d put “happiness” on her clients goal sheets—just plain-vanilla happiness, even if it were only for an afternoon. At noon that day, she’d taken clients to Bella Luna for lunch: four women, plus Tia, sharing two pizzas and six desserts as they sat under the three-dimensional stars decorating the restaurant.
    Tia jerked backward as the bus lurched forward. She faced a row of construction workers, their roughened hands clutching lunch bags, thermoses, and work gloves. She ran her hand over the latest mystery she was reading to chase away thoughts. She’d put Honor’s picture in the middle of the library book in a vain attempt to press out the crumples she’d caused by stupidly tossing it in the trash. As she stroked the book, a proper repentant action took form. Tia would finally put all the pictures in an album. Now, tonight, she’d start preparing for the visit she expected on Honor’s eighteenth birthday.
    Before giving up her baby, Tia had taken legal steps to guarantee that Honor could contact her in the future. She hoped that ensuring access for her daughter might mitigate, even if only in the smallest way, the pain of having lost her child. The adoption, though identified, wasn’t an open adoption; there would be no contact except the pictures Caroline sent. However, at least with the papers Tia had signed, Honor could easily